ON LOVE & HAPPINESS

D-at-otaisi- 1 ?

Here is a generous selection from the pro
found, illuminating thoughts of the renowned
visionary /priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
on love and happiness. The passages gathered
here, culled from the extensive body of his
work, make some of his finest writing avail
able to readers who might otherwise not know
where to begin; those already familiar with
his work will find On Love and Happiness a
compendium of spiritually enriching, life-
affirming ideas in a convenient format. All
will benefit from a first or renewed ac
quaintance with this author, whose remark
able, passionate lines of thought extend from
earliest prehistory to the ultimate purposes at
the end of the universe and the fulfillment of
time.

Teilhard de Chardin probes the innermost
dynamics of love and celebrates it as "the
most universal^ tremendous/ and mysterious
of the cosmic forces/ 1 viewing the growth of
our ability to love as bound up with the des
tiny of the universe. These reflections offer"
luminous insights into the nature, role, and
transformative potential of sexuality; the con
cept of "right love"; the place of passion and
chastity in the scheme of things; the contri
butions of faith and science; love as a form of
human energy integral to development of the
person, individual relationships, and the
human community; and the spiritual dimen
sion of love as the balance point among man,
woman, and God.

OK Love and Happiness also explores the
meaning of "the happy life" and "happiness 11
itself, defines "the best route leading to human
happiness/ 1 and shares 5 ^ecific ways one can
adap: his or her lifesty i to move towards
happ:n r.s. Teilhard de Ch,,~din distinguishes

i :: :itinued on back flap)

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On

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On

Happiness

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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1817
Harper & Row, Publishers, San Francisco

Cambridge, Hagerstoum, New York, Philadelphia
London, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Sydney

On Love 6 Happiness was originally published in two volumes:

On Love was first published in 1 967 by Editions du Seuil, <c) Editions
du Seuil, 1967; in the English translation of extracts from The
Evolution of Chastity, William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., London, 1972.
The other extracts reproduced in On Low are taken from the following
books: The Phenomenon of Man in the English translation William
Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., London, and Harper & Brothers, New York,
1959; Le Milieu Dittn in the English translation William Collins Sons
& Co. Ltd., London, and Harper & Brothers, New York, 1960; Writ
ings in Time of War in the English translation William Collins Sons
& Co. Ltd., London, and Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., New York,
1968; Human Energy ( 1962 by Editipns du Seuil, in the English
translation William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., London, 1969. Reprinted
by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Dimension
Books, Inc. The original French editions of these books were published
by Editions du Seuil, with the exception of Writings in Time of War,
which was published by Editions Bernard Grasset.

On Happiness was first published in 1966 by Editions du Seuil,
Editions du Seuil, 1 966; in the English translation William Collins
Sons & Co. Ltd., London 1973.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part
of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em
bodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper
& Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

Designer: Jim Menmck

Library of Cc^sress Cataloging in Publication Data

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre.
ON LOVE & HAPPINESS.

1. Love Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Happin
Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Title. II. Title: On
love and happiness.

B243Q.T37305 1984 i28'-4 83-48979

ISBN 0-06-068151-9

84 85 86 8" 88 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

I. PASSAGES ON LOVE FROM

1. Human Energy, "The Spirit of the Earth" 3

2. Human Energy, "Sketch of a Personalistic Uni
verse" 7

3. The Evolution of Chastity 15

4. Writings in Time of War, "The Priest" 17

5. Le Milieu Divin, "The Divine Milieu" /9

6. Human Energy, "Human Energy" 21

7. The Phenomenon of Man, "Beyond the Collec
tive: the Hyper-Personal" 42

II. REFLECTIONS ON HAPPINESS

8. The Theoretical Axes of Happiness 57
9- The Fundamental Rules of Happiness 77

III. THREE WEDDING ADDRESSES

10. At the Wedding of Odette Bacot and Jean
Teilhard d'Eyry 8 j

11. At the Wedding of M. and Mme de la Gou-
blaye de Menorval 95

12. At the Wedding of Christine Dresch and
Claude-Marie Haardt 100

!MO(

C>WOOW^

I

^Passages on Hove

. , . Love is the most universal, the most tremendous
and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces. After
centuries of tentative effort, social institutions have
externally diked and canalized it. Taking advantage
of this situation, the moralists have tried to submit
it to rules. But in constructing their theories they
have never got beyond the level of an elementary
empiricism influenced by out-of-date conceptions of
matter and the relics of old taboos. Socially, in sci
ence, business and public affairs, men pretend not
to know it, though under the surface it is every
where. Huge, ubiquitous and always unsubdued
this wild force seems to have defeated all hopes of
understanding and governing it. It is therefore al
lowed to run everywhere beneath our civilization.
We are conscious of it, but all we ask of it is to
amuse us, or not to harm us. Is it truly possible for
humanity to continue to live and grow without ask
ing itself how much truth and energy it is losing by
neglecting its incredible power of love?
From the standpoint of spiritual evolution, which

we here assume, it seems that we can give a name
and value to this strange energy of love. Can we not
say quite simply that in its essence it is the attraction
exercised on each unit of consciousness by the cen
ter of the universe in course of taking shape? It calls
us to the great union, the realization of which is the
only process at present taking place in nature. By
this hypothesis, according to which (in agreement
with the findings of psychological analysis) love is
the primal and universal psychic energy, does not
everything become clear around us, both for our
minds and our actions? We may try to reconstruct
the history of the world from outside by observing
the play of atomic, molecular or cellular combina
tions in their various processes. We may attempt,
still more efficaciously, this same task from within
by following the progress made by conscious spon
taneity and noting the successive stages achieved.
The most telling and profound way of describing
the evolution of the universe would undoubtedly
be to trace the evolution of love.

In its most primitive forms, when life is scarcely
individualized, love is hard to distinguish from mo
lecular forces; one might think of it as a matter of
chemisms or tactisms. Then little by little it becomes
distinct, though still confused for a very long time
with the simple function of reproduction. Not till
hominization does it at last reveal the secret and

- 4 -

manifold virtues of its violence. "Hominized" love
is distinct from all other love, because the "spec
trum" of its warm and penetrating light is marvel-
ously enriched. No longer only a unique and peri
odic attraction directed to material fertility; but an
unbounded and continuous possibility of contact
through spirit much more than through body; the
play of countless subtle antennae seeking one an
other in the light and darkness of the soul; the pull
towards mutual sensibility and completion, in which
preoccupation with preserving the species gradually
dissolves in the greater intoxication of two people
consummating a world. It is in reality the universe
that is pressing on, through woman, towards man.
The whole question (the vital question for the
earth) is that they shall recognize one another.

If man fails to recognize the true nature, the true
object of his love, the confusion is vast and ir
remediable. Bent on assuaging a passion intended
for the All on an object too small to satisfy it, he will
strive to compensate a fundamental imbalance by
materialism or an ever increasing multiplicity of ex
periments. His efforts will be fruitless and in the
eyes of one who can see the inestimable value of the
"spiritual quantum 1 ' of man, a terrible waste. But let
us put aside any sentimental feelings or virtuous
indignation. Let us look very coolly as biologists or
engineers, at the lurid atmosphere of our great

- 5 -

towns at evening. There, and everywhere else as
well, the earth is continually dissipating its most
marvelous power. This is pure loss. Earth is burning
away, wasted on the empty air. How much energy
do you think the spirit of the earth loses in a single
night?

If only man would turn and see the reality of the
universe shining in the spirit and through the flesh.
He would then discover the reason for what has
hitherto deceived and perverted his powers of love.
Woman stands before him as the lure and symbol of
the world. He cannot embrace her except by him
self growing, in his turn, to a world scale. And
because the world is always growing and always
unfinished and always ahead of us, to achieve his
love man is engaged in a limitless conquest of the
universe and himself. In this sense, man can only
attain woman by consummating a union with the
universe. Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like
the blood of spiritual evolution. This is the first
revelation we receive from the sense of the earth.

From Human Energy,
translated byj. M. Cohen, 32-34

- 6 -

. . . The mutual attraction of the sexes is so funda
mental that any explanation of the world (biologi
cal, philosophical or religious) that does not suc
ceed in finding it a structurally essential place in its
system is virtually condemned. To find such a place
for sexuality in a cosmic system based on union is
particularly easy. But this place must be clearly
defined, both for the future and the past. What
exactly are the essence and direction of "passionate
love" in a universe whose stuff is personality?

In its initial forms, and up to a very high stage in
life, sexuality seems identified with propagation.
Beings come together to prolong not themselves
but what they have gained. So close is the link be
tween pairing-off and reproduction that philoso
phers like Bergson have seen in it a proof that life
has more existence than living beings; and religions
as advanced as Christianity have hitherto based al
most the whole of their moral code on the child.

But things look very different from the point of
view to which the analysis of a structurally conver-

gent cosmos has brought us. That the dominant
function of sexuality was at first to assure the preser
vation of the species is indisputable. This was so
until the state of personality was established in man.
But from the critical moment of hominization, an
other more essential role was developed for love, a
role of which we are seemingly only just beginning
to feel the importance; I mean the necessary synthe
sis of the two principles, male and female, in the
building of the human personality. No moralist or
psychologist has ever doubted that these partners
find a mutual completion in the play of their repro
ductive function. But hitherto this has been re
garded only as a secondary effect, linked as an acces
sory to the principal phenomenon of reproduction.
In obedience to the laws of the personal universe,
the importance of these factors is tending, if I am
not mistaken, to be reversed. Man and woman for
the child, still and for so long as life on earth has not
reached maturity. But man and woman for one an
other increasingly and for ever.

In order to establish the truth of this picture, I
cannot do otherwise or better than resort to the sole
criterion that has guided our progress throughout
this study: that is to say, bring the theory into the
most perfect possible coherence with a vaster realm
of reality. If man and woman were, I will say, princi
pally for the child, then the role and power of love

- 8 -

would diminish as human individuality is achieved,
and the density of population on the earth is reach
ing saturation point. But if man and woman are
principally for one another, then we imagine that
with the growth of humanization they will feel an
increasing need to draw closer. Now our experi
ence proves that this is the actual state of things and
that the other is not. It must therefore be explained.
In the hypothesis here accepted of a universe in
process of personalization, the fact that love is in
creasing instead of diminishing in the course of ho-
minization has a very natural explanation, and ex
tension into the future. In the human individual, as
we have already said, evolution does not close on
itself, but continues further towards a more perfect
concentration, linked with further differentiation,
also obtained by union. Woman is for man, we
should say, precisely the end that is capable of
releasing this forward movement. Through woman
and woman alone, man can escape from the isola
tion in which, even if perfected, he would still be in
danger of being enclosed. Hence it is no longer
strictly correct to say that the mesh of the universe
is, in our experience, the thinking monad. The com
plete human molecule is already around us: a more
synthesized element and more spiritualized from
the start, than the individual personality. It is a dual
ity, comprising masculine and feminine together.
- 9 -

Here the cosmic role of sexuality appears in its
full breadth. And here at the same time, the rules
appear which will guide us in the mastery of that
terrifying energy, in which the power that causes
the universe to converge on itself passes through us.

The first of these rules is that love, in conformity
with the general laws of creative union, contributes
to the spiritual differentiations of the two beings
which it brings together. The one must not absorb
the other nor, still less, should the two lose them
selves in the enjoyments of physical possession,
which would signify a lapse into plurality and return
to nothingness. This is current experience, but can
only be properly understood in the context of spirit-
matter. Love is an adventure and a conquest. It
survives and develops like the universe itself only
by perpetual discovery. The only right love is that
between couples whose passion leads them tx'h,
one through the other, to a higher possession of
their being. The gravity of offenses against love
therefore is not that they outrage some sort of mod
esty or virtue. It is that they fritter away, by neglect
or lust, the universe's reserves of personalization.
This wastage is the true explanation of the disorders
of "impurity." And at a higher degree in the devel
opment of union this same wastage occurs in a sub
tler form, changing love into a joint egoism.

. . . When two beings between whom a great love
- 10 -

is possible manage to meet among a swarm of other
beings, they tend immediately to enclose them
selves in the jealous possession of their mutual gain.
Impelled by the fulfillment that has engulfed them,
they try instinctively to shut themselves into one
another, to the exclusion of the rest. And even if
they succeed in overcoming the voluptuous tempta
tions of absorption and repose, they attempt to re
serve the promises of the future for their mutual
discovery, as if they constituted a two-person universe.

Now after all that we have said about the proba
ble structure of the spirit, it is clear that this dream
is only a dangerous illusion. In virtue of the same
principle that compelled " simple" personal ele
ments to complete themselves in the pair, the pair
in its turn must pursue the achievements that its
growth requires beyond itself. And in two ways. On
the one hand it must look outside itself for group
ings of the same order with which to associate with
a view to centering itself further. . . . On the other
hand, the center towards which the two lovers con
verge by uniting must manifest its personality at the
very heart of the circle in which their union wishes
to isolate itself. Without coming out of itself, the
pair will find its equilibrium only in a third being
ahead of it. What name must we give to this mysteri
ous "intruder"?

For so long as the sexualized elements of the

- ii -

world had not reached the stage of personality,
progeny alone could represent the reality in which
the authors of generation in some way prolonged
themselves. But as soon as love came into play, no
longer only between parents but between two per
sons, the final goal necessarily appeared more or
less indistinctly ahead of the lovers, the place at
which not only their race but their personality
would be at once preserved and completed. Then
the "fall forward/* of which we have already fol
lowed the adventures, begins once more. Stage by
stage it must go on till the end of the world. And
finally it is the total center itself, much more than
the child, that appears necessary for the consolida
tion of love. Love is a three-term function: man,
woman, and God. Its whole perfection and success
are bound up with the harmonious balance of these
three elements.

From Human Energy, translated by J. M. Cohen, 72-76

- 12 -

(T^^^(T !! !^^^(r^^^

3

... A real nobility of passion lends wings and that
is why the best test for gauging the sublimity of a
love would be to note how decisively it develops in
the direction of a greater freedom of spirit. The
more spiritual the affection, the less it sucks up into
itself and the stronger its impulse towards action.

. . . love stands as the threshold of another uni
verse. Beyond the vibrations that are familiar to us,
the rainbow of its merging colors is constantly and
vigorously extending; but, for all the charm of the
tints in the lower ranges, it is only in the direction
of the " ultra* * that the creation of light makes real
progress. It is in those invisible we might almost
say immaterial areas that we can look for true initi
ation into unity. The depths we attribute to matter are
no more than the reflection from the heights of spirit.

All human experience and thought, I believe,
show that this is undeniable.

... I have come to the point where, it seems to
me, two phases in the creative transformation of
human love are emerging for me. During a first

phase of humanity, man and woman concentrate
upon the physical act of giving and the concern for
reproduction: at the same time a growing nimbus of
spiritual exchanges is gradually being built up
around this fundamental act. At first this nimbus was
no more than an imperceptible fringe; slowly, and
yet ever more clearly, there is a shift, and the fruit-
fulness and mystery of union move into that zone:
and it is on that side that the balance finally gives
way and comes to rest. At that very moment, how
ever, the center of physical union from which the
light was radiating is found to be incapable of ac
cepting any further intensification. The focus of at
traction suddenly shifts further and further end
lessly, indeed ahead. If the lovers are to be able to
continue to increase their mutual possession in
spirit, they have to turn away from the body and
look for one another in God. Virginity rests upon
chastity as thought rests upon life: each is arrived at
through a reversal of direction, or by passing
through one unique point.

Such a transformation, of course, cannot be
effected instantaneously on the surface of the earth:
time is essential. When you heat water, the whole
volume does not turn into steam at once the "liq
uid phase" and the "gaseous phase" are found to
gether for some time, and this must necessarily be
so. Nevertheless, that duality covers but one single
- 14 -

developing event the direction and "dignity" of
which are shared by the whole. Thus, at the present
moment, physical union still retains its value and
necessity for the human race; but its spiritual quality
is now defined by the higher type of union to which
it has served as the preliminary and which it now
fosters. Within the noosphere, love is now undergo
ing a "change of state"; and it is in this new direc
tion that mankind's collective entry into God is
being organized.

This is how I see the evolution of chastity.

There is no theoretical difficulty about this trans
formation of love. All that is needed to effect it is
that the appeal of the personal divine center be felt
with such intensity that it overcomes the natural
attraction whose pull would tend prematurely to
fling together the pairs of human monads.

From the practical point of view, however, I must
confess that the suggestion presents such difficulty
that what I have written here would be dismissed by
nine people out of ten as overly ingenuous or even
wildly extravagant. Does not universal experience
show conclusively that spiritual loves have always
come to a sordid end? Man is made to keep his feet
firmly on the ground flight has always been be
yond our dreams. . . .

I am quite sure about my answer; yes, there have
been madmen with such a dream, and that is why

- 15 -

we have now conquered the air. What paralyzes life
is lack of faith and lack of courage. The difficulty lies
not in solving problems but in expressing them cor
rectly; and we can now see that it is biologically
undeniable that unless we harness passion to the
service of spirit there can be no progress. Sooner or
later, then, and in spite of all our incredulity, the
world will take this step because the greater truth
always prevails and the greater good emerges in the
end.

The day will come when, after mastering the
ether, the winds, the tides, gravity, we shall master
the energies of love, for God. And then, for the
second time in the history of the world, man will
have made fire his servant.

From The Evolution of Chastity (unpublished),
translated by Rene Hague

(T^^^C^J^^f^^^

And this means but one thing, Lord; that through
the whole width and breadth of the Real, through
all its past and through all that it will become,
through all that I undergo and all that I do, through
all that I am bound by, through every enterprise,
through my whole life's work, I can make my way
to you, be one with you, and progress endlessly in
that union.

With a fullness no man has conceived you real
ized, through your incarnation, love's threefold
dream: to be so enveloped in the object of love as
to be absorbed in it endlessly to intensify its pres
ence and, without ever knowing surfeit, to be lost
in it.

I pray that Christ's influence, spiritually substan
tial, physically mortifying, may ever spread wider
among all beings, and that thence it may pour down
upon me and bring me life.

I pray that this brief and limited contact with the
sacramental species may introduce me to a universal

and eternal communion with Christ, with his omni-
operant will and his boundless mystical body.

From Writings in Time of War, translated by
Ren Hague, 217-218

- 18 -

(T*$&4^(r*!rtW^(?*&*M^(^^^

5

What I cry out for, like every being, with my whole
life and all my earthly passion, is something very
different from an equal to cherish: it is a God to
adore.

To adore . . . that means to lose oneself in the
unfathomable, to plunge into the inexhaustible, to
find peace in the incorruptible, to be absorbed in
defined immensity, to offer oneself to the fire and
the transparency, to annihilate oneself in proportion
as one becomes more deliberately conscious of one
self, and to give of one's deepest to that whose
depth has no end. Whom, then, can we adore?

The more man becomes man, the more will he
become prey to a need, a need that is always more
explicit, more subtle and more magnificent, the
need to adore.

Disperse, O Jesus, the clouds with your lightning!
Show yourself to us as the Mighty, the Radiant, the
Risen! Come to us once again as the Pantocrator
who filled the solitude of the cupolas in the ancient
basilicas! Nothing less than this Parousia is needed

to counterbalance and dominate in our hearts the
glory of the world that is coming into view. And so
that we should triumph over the world with you,
come to us clothed in the glory of the world.

From Le Milieu Divin, translated by Bernard Wall, 117-118

- 20 -

(T*&^C**to^G**^

... For the last century, without greatly noticing it,
we have been undergoing a remarkable transforma
tion in the range of intellect. To discover and know
has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can
we not recognize it already in caveman? But it is
only yesterday that this essential need to know has
become explicit and changed into a vital, autono
mous function, taking precedence in our lives over
our preoccupation with food and drink. Now, if I
am not mistaken, this phenomenon of the individu-
alization of our highest psychological functions is
not only far from having reached its limits in the
field of pure thought, but is also tending to develop
in a neighboring realm, which has remained practi
cally undefined and unexplored: the "terra ignota"
of the affections and love.

Paradoxically, love (I understand love here in the
strict sense of "passion"), despite (or perhaps pre
cisely because of) its ubiquity and violence, has hith
erto been excluded from any rational systematiza-
tionof the energy of man. Empirically, morality has

succeeded more or less successfully in codifying its
practice with a view to the maintenance and mate
rial propagation of the race. But has anyone seri
ously thought that beneath this turbulent power
(which is nevertheless well known to be the inspirer
of genius, the arts, and all poetry) a formidable
creative urge has remained in reserve, and that man
will only be truly man from the day when he has not
only checked, but transformed, utilized, and liber
ated it? Today, for our century, avid to lose no
energy and to control the most intimate psychologi
cal mechanism, light seems to be beginning to
break. Love, like thought, is still in full growth in
the noosphere. The excess of its growing energies
over the daily diminishing needs of human propaga
tion becomes every day more manifest. And love is
therefore tending in a purely hominized form, to fill
a much larger function than the simple urge to re
production. Between man and woman a specific and
mutual power of spiritual sensitization and fertiliza
tion is probably still slumbering. It demands to be
released, so that it may flow irresistibly towards the
true and beautiful. Its awakening is certain. Expan
sion, I have said, of an ancient power. The expres
sion is undoubtedly too weak. Beyond a certain
degree of sublimation spiritualized love, by the
boundless possibilities of intuition and communica
tion it contains, penetrates the unknown; it will in

- 22 -

our sight take its place, in the mysterious future,
with the group of new faculties and consciousnesses
that is awaiting us.

. . . Union, the true upward union in the spirit,
ends by establishing the elements it dominates in
their own perfection. Union differentiates. In virtue
of this fundamental principle, elementary personali
ties can, and can only affirm themselves by acceding
to a psychic unity or higher soul. But this always on
one condition: that the higher center to which they
come to join without mingling together has its own
autonomous reality. Since there is no fusion or dissolu
tion of the elementary personalities the center in
which they join must necessarily be distinct from them,
that is to say have its own personality.

Hence we have the following formula for the
supreme goal towards which human energy is tend
ing: an organic plurality the elements of which find
the consummation of their own personality in a
paroxysm of mutual union and limpidity: the whole
body being supported by the unifying influence of
a distinct center of super-personalization.

This last condition or qualification has considera
ble importance. It demonstrates that the noosphere
in fact physically requires, for its maintenance and
functioning, the existence in the universe of a true
pole of psychic convergence: a center different from
all the other centers which it " super-centers 1 ' by

- 23 -

assimilation: a personality distinct from all the per
sonalities it perfects by uniting with them. The
world would not function if there did not exist,
somewhere ahead in time and space, "a cosmic
point Omega" of total synthesis.

Consideration of this Omega will allow us to
define more completely in a concluding chapter, the
hidden nature of what we have till now called
vaguely enough, "human energy/*

LOVE, A HIGHER FORM OF HUMAN ENERGY

... In us and around us, we have been able to
conclude, the world *s units are continually and in
creasingly personalizing, by approaching a goal of
unification, itself personal; in such a way that the
world's essential energy definitely radiates from this
goal and finally flows back towards it; having con
fusedly set the cosmic mass in motion, it emerges
from it to form the noosphere.

What name should we give to an influence of this
sort?

Only one is possible: love.

Love is by definition the word we use for attrac
tions of a personal nature. Since once the universe
has become a thinking one everything in the last
resort moves in and towards personality, it is neces-
- 24 -

sarily love, a kind of love, which forms and will
increasingly form, in its pure state, the material of
human energy.

Is it possible to verify a posteriori this conclusion
which is imposed on us a priori by the conditions of
functioning and maintenance of the thinking activ
ity of the earth's surface?

Yes, I believe so. And in two different ways.

Psychologically first, by observing that love carried
to a certain degree of universality by a perception
of the center Omega is the only power capable of
totalizing the possibilities of human action without
internal contradictions.

Then historically, by observing that such a univer
sal love actually presents itself to our experience as
the highest term of a transformation already begun
in the mass of the noosphere.

Let us try to demonstrate this.

I . LOVE, THE TOTALIZING PRINCIPLE OF HUMAN
ENERGY

Those who greet with the greatest skepticism any
suggestion tending to promote a general coordina
tion of thought on earth are precisely the first to
recognize and deplore the state of division in which
human energies are vegetating: disconnected ac
tions by the individual, disconnected individuals in
- 25 -

society. It is evident, they say, that a vast power is
neutralized and lost in this unordered movement.
But how can you expect dust like this to cohere?
Themselves already divided by nature, these human
particles continue to repel one another irremedia
bly. You might perhaps force them mechanically
together. But to infuse a common soul into them is
a physical impossibility.

The strength and weakness of all these objections
to the possibility of some eventual unification of the
world seem to depend on the fact that they insidi
ously exaggerate appearances which are only too
real, without being willing to take into account cer
tain new factors already perceptible in humanity.
The pluralists always reason as if no principle of
connection existed, or tended to exist, in nature
outside the vague or superficial relations habitually
examined by common sense and sociology. They
are at bottom juridicists and fixists who cannot
imagine anything around them except what seems
to them always to have been there.

But let us see what will happen in our souls the
instant there emerges, at the moment fixed by the
march of evolution, the perception of an animated
universal center of convergence. Let us imagine
(this is no fiction, as we shall soon state) a man who
has become conscious of his personal relations with
a supreme personality, to whom he is led to add

- 26 -

himself by the entire play of cosmic activities. In
such a man, and starting with him, a process of
unification has inevitably begun, which will be di
vided into the following stages: totalization of each
operation in regard to the individual; totalization of
the individual in regard to himself; and finally, total
ization of individuals in collective humanity. All this
"impossibility" taking place naturally under the in
fluence of love.

A. Totalization by Love of Individual Actions

In the divided state in which the pluralists con
sider us (that is to say outside the conscious influ
ence of Omega) we most often act only from a tiny
portion of ourselves. Whether eating or working,
or doing mathematics or a crossword puzzle, man is
only partially engaged in his activity, with only one
or another of his faculties. His senses, or his limbs,
or his reason function, but never his heart itself.
Human action but not the action of a whole man,
as a scholastic would say. That is why after a life of
highest effort, a scientist or thinker may end up
impoverished and desiccated disillusioned; his
mind but not his personality has worked on inani
mate objects. He has given himself; he has not been
able to love.

Let us now observe the same forms of activity in
the light of Omega. Omega, in which all things

- 27 ~

converge, is reciprocally that from which all things
radiate. Impossible to place it as a point at the peak
of the universe without at the same time diffusing
its presence within each smallest advance of evolu
tion. The meaning of this is nothing less than this:
that for him who has seen it everything, however
humble, provided it places itself in the line of progress,
is warmed, illumined, and animated, and conse
quently becomes an object to which he gives his
whole adhesion. What was cold, dead, impersonal
for him who cannot see, becomes charged for those
who see not only with life but with a stronger life
than theirs; in such a way that they feel themselves
seized and assimilated, as they act, to a far greater
degree than they themselves are seizing and as
similating. Where the former only finds an object
with limited reactions, the latter are able to expand
with the totality of their powers to love the lowest
of their tasks as passionately as if they could touch
or caress it. In the external appearance of the opera
tion there is no change. But what a difference in the
stuff of the action, in the intensity of the gift! The
whole distance between consumption and commu
nion.

And this is the first step in totalization. Within a
world of personal and convergent structure, in
which attraction becomes love, man discovers that
he can give himself boundlessly to everything he

- 28 -

does. In the least of his acts he can make an entire
contact with the universe, with the whole surface
and depth of his being. Everything has become a
complete nourishment to him.

B. Totalization of the Individual on Himself by
Love

That each of our separate pursuits can become
total under the animating influence of Omega is
already a marvelous utilization of human energy.
But no sooner has this first transfiguration of our
activities taken shape than it tends to enlarge into
another more profound metamorphosis. By the
very fact that they become total, each one in itself,
our activities are logically led to totalize, merged
together in a single act. Let us see how.

The immediate effect of universal love, rendered
possible by Omega, is to attach to each of our ac
tions a root identity of passionate involvement and
gift of self. What will the influence of this common
ground (one might call it this new climate) be on
our inner life? Shall we dissolve under its pleasant
warmth? Will it blur the clear outline of the objects
around us with an atmosphere of mirage? Will it
take our attention from the individual and tangible,
to absorb us in a confused sense of the universal? If
we fear this, it is because we have again forgotten
that in the direction of spirit union differentiates. It

- 29 -

is undoubtedly true that once I have discovered
Omega, all things become for me in some ways the
same thing; so that whatever I do I shall have the
impression of doing one and the same thing. But
this fundamental unity has nothing in common with
a melting into homogeneity. In the first place, far
from weakening, it accentuates the outline of the
elements it assembles; for Omega, the sole object of
desire, only forms for our eyes and offers itself to
our touch in the completion of those elementary
advances by which the fabric of evolution is empiri
cally taking shape. But there is more to it than this.
Love not only impregnates the universe like an oil
that will revive its colors. It does not simply bind the
clouded dust of our experiences into a common
lucidity. It is a true synthesis which operates on the
grouped bundle of our faculties. And this is indeed
the point that it is most important to understand.
In the superficial course of our existences, there
is a difference between seeing and thinking, be
tween understanding and loving, between giving
and receiving, between growing and shrinking, be
tween living and dying. But what will happen to all
those contradictions once their diversity has re
vealed itself in Omega as an infinite variety of forms
of a single universal contact? Without any sort of
radical disappearance they will tend to combine into
a common sum, in which their still recognizable

- 30 -

plurality will burst forth in ineffable riches. Not any
sort of interference, but a resonance. Why should
we be surprised? Do we not know, at a lesser de
gree of intensity, a similar phenomenon in our own
experience? When a man loves a woman with a
strong and noble passion that exalts his being above
its common level, that man's life, his powers of
feeling and creation, his whole universe, are defi
nitely held and at the same time sublimated by his
love of that woman. But however necessary the
woman may be to that man, to reflect, reveal, trans
mit, and " personalize*' the world for him, she is still
not the center of the world! If therefore the love of
one unit for another is powerful enough to melt
(without fusing) the multitude of our perceptions
and emotions into a single impression, how great
must be the vibration drawn from our beings by
their encounter with Omega?

Indeed we are called by the music of the universe
to reply, each with his own pure and incommunica
ble harmonic. When, as love for the All advances in
our hearts, we feel stretching out beyond the diver
sity of our efforts and desires the bounding simplic
ity of an urge in which the innumerable shades of
passion and action mingle in exaltation without ever
becoming confused, then, within the mass formed
by human energy, we shall each approach the pleni
tude of our powers and personality.

- 3* -

C. Totalization by Love of Individuals in Humanity

The transition from the individual to the collec
tive is the present crucial problem confronting
human energy. And it must be recognized that the
first steps towards its solution only increase our con
sciousness of its difficulties. On the one side the ever
tighter network of economic links, together with an
indubitable biological determinism, inevitably
presses us against one another. On the other, in the
course of this compression, we seem to feel the most
precious part of ourselves our spontaneity and lib
erty perishing. Totalitarianism and personalism:
contrary to our theoretical expectations, must these
two functions necessarily vary in inverse proportion
to one another? In order to build the future (for we
must certainly go forward) have we to choose be
tween the Charybdis of collectivism and the Scylla
of anarchy, between a mechanizing symbiosis and a
devitalizing dispersion, between a termite colony
and the Brownian movement? This dilemma, long
evident to the clear-sighted, seems now suddenly to
be entering the field of public notice. For the last
year there has been no review or conference in
which the question has not been broached. But the
outline of a good solution has, alas, never been put
forward.

- 32 -

The reason, in my opinion, for the disturbing
checks suffered by humanity during the last century
in its efforts to organize itself is not to be attributed
to some natural obstacle inherent in the undertak
ing itself, but to the fact that the attempts at group
ing are made by inverting the natural order of fac
tors of the projected union. Let me explain.

To totalize without depersonalizing. To save the
assemblage and the units at the same time. Every
one agrees that this is the dual task to be accom
plished. But how do present-day social groups
(democrats, communists, fascists) rate the values
they theoretically agree in wishing to preserve?
They all consider the individual as secondary and
transitory, and place the primacy of the pure totality
at the head of their programs. In all the systems of
human organization battling before our eyes, it is
assumed that the final state towards which the noos-
phere is tending is a body without an individualized
soul, a faceless organism, a diffuse humanity, an
Impersonality!

Now once this point of departure is accepted, it
vitiates the whole subsequent progress of the opera
tion, to the extent of making it impractical. In a
synthesizing process, the character finally impressed
on the unified elements is necessarily that which
permeates the active unifying principle. The crystal
gives geometrical form to, the cell animates the

- 33 -

matter that joins it. If the universe is tending finally
to become something, how can it keep a place in itself
for Someone? If the peak of human evolution is re
garded as impersonal by nature, the units accepting
it will inevitably, in spite of all efforts to the con
trary, see their personality diminishing under its
influence. And this is exactly what is happening.
The servants of material progress or of racial enti
ties may try their hardest to emerge into freedom,
but they are fatally sucked in and assimilated by the
determinisms they construct. Their own machinery
turns them into machines. The true Hindu karma.
And at this moment all that remains to control the
machinery of human energy is the use of brute force
the same force that is very logically being offered
us at present as an object of worship.

Now this is treason against spirit, and at the same
time a grave mistake in human technology. A sys
tem formed of elements of consciousness can only
cohere on a basis of immanence. Not force but love
above us; and therefore, at the beginning, the recog
nized existence of an Omega that makes possible a
universal love.

The mistake, as we have said, of modern social
doctrines is to present enthusiasts for human effort
with an impersonal humanity. What would happen
on the day we recognized, instead of this blind di
vinity, the presence of a conscious center of total

- 34 -

convergence? Then by the opposite determinism to
the one against which we are struggling, in
dividualities, caught in the irresistible current of
human totalization, would feel themselves strength
ened by the very movement that brings them to
gether. The more they grouped themselves under
a personality, the more forcibly they would them
selves become personal And quite naturally, with
out effort, by virtue of the properties of love.

We have already several times stressed the capital
truth that " union differentiates." Love is only the
concrete expression of this metaphysical principle.
Let us imagine an earth on which human beings
were primarily (and even in a sense exclusively)
concerned with achieving global accession to a pas
sionately desired universal being, whom each one
would recognize as a living presence in the most
incommunicable features of his neighbor. In such a
world, constraint would become useless as a means
of keeping individuals in the most favorable condi
tion for action, of guiding them in free competition
towards better social groupings, of making them
accept the restrictions and sacrifices imposed by a
certain human selection, of deciding them once and
for all not to waste their power of love but to raise
it carefully and husband it for the final union. Under
these conditions life would finally escape (supreme
liberation) from the tyranny of material coercions;

- 35 -

and a personality of increasing freedom would grow
up without opposition within the totality.

''Love one another." Those words were pro
nounced two thousand years ago. But today they
sound again in our ears in a very different tone. For
centuries charity and fraternity could only be pre
sented as a code of moral perfection, or perhaps as
a practical method of diminishing the pains or fric
tions of earthly life. Now since the existence of the
noosphere, on the one hand, and the vital necessity
we are under of preserving it, on the other, have
been revealed to our minds, the voice which speaks
takes on a more imperious tone. It no longer says
only: "Love one another in order to be perfect,"
but adds, "Love one another or you perish." "Real
istic" minds are welcome to smile at dreamers who
speak of a humanity cemented and armored no
longer with brutality but with love. They are wel
come to deny that a maximum of physical power
may coincide with a maximum of gentleness and
goodness. Their critical skepticism cannot prevent
the theory and experience of spiritual energy from
combining to warn us that we have reached a decisive
point in human evolution, at which the only way for
ward is in the direction of a common passion, a
"conspiration."

To go on putting our hopes in a social order
obtained by external violence would simply mean

- 3 6-

to abandon all hope of carrying the spirit of earth
to its limits.

Now human energy, being the expression of a
movement as irresistible and infallible as the uni
verse itself, cannot possibly be prevented by any
obstacle from freely reaching the natural goal of its
evolution.

Therefore, despite all checks and all improbabili
ties, we are inevitably approaching a new age, in
which the world will throw off its chains and at last
give itself up to the power of its inner affinities.

Either we must doubt the value of everything
around us, or we must utterly believe in the possi
bility, and I should now add, in the inevitable conse
quences, of universal love.

What are these consequences?

So far, in our study of the socio-totalizing love of
human energy, we have principally considered its
singular property of joining and articulating the
thinking molecules of the noosphere without turn
ing them into machines. But this is only the negative
face of the phenomenon. Love has not only the
virtue of uniting without depersonalizing, but in
uniting it ultra-personalizes. From this pass that we
have reached, what horizons appear before us in the
skies of humanity?

Here, we must first of all look backwards, to the
point where we left the individual human nucleus,

- 37 -

at the completion of its transformation by love.
Under Omega's influence, we said, each separate
soul becomes capable of breathing itself out in a
single act into which the incalculable plurality of its
perceptions and activities, its sufferings and desires,
passes without confusion. Well, the sum of elemen
tary energies constituting the global mass of human
energy seems to be moving towards an analogous
metamorphosis of a far higher order. We have fol
lowed, in the individual, the gradual assumption of
the emotions, aspirations, and actions in an indefina
ble operation sui generis, which is all these things at
once and something more as well. The same phe
nomenon, on an incomparably greater scale, tends
to take place under the same Omega influence in
terrestrial thought collected as a whole. And indeed
when the whole of humanity, operating and ex
periencing at the same time with its exploratory
surface, the center towards which it is converging;
when the same fluid passion suffuses and connects
the free diversity of attitudes, points of view and
efforts, each represented in the universe by a partic
ular unit of the human myriad; when the overflow
ing multitude of individual contradictions harmo
nizes in the profound simplicity of a single desire,
what is all this but the genesis of a collective and
- 38 -

unique action, in which, in the sole conceivable form
of love, the powers of personality comprised in the
noosphere are realizing themselves, as they ap
proach maturity, that is to say, their final conflu
ence?

Totalization of total human energy in a total love.

The ideal glimpsed in their dreams by the world
technicians.

This, psychologically, is what love can do if car
ried to a universal degree.

But is this miracle really moving towards realiza
tion?

If it is, some traces of this prodigious transforma
tion must be perceptible in history. Can we recog
nize them? This is what I have still to seek and show.

2. LOVE, THE HISTORICAL PRODUCT OF HUMAN
EVOLUTION

The above analysis of the synthesizing power of
love over the inner life was not made, and indeed
could not be made, without some visible model.

Where then in nature today does a first sketch, a
first approach to the total act of which we were
apparently dreaming exist? Nowhere more clearly,
I think, than in the act of Christian love as it can be
performed by a modern believer for whom the crea-

- 39 -

tion has come to be expressed in terms of evolution.
In such a man's eyes, the world's history bears the
form of a vast cosmogenesis, in the course of which
all the threads of reality converge without fusing in
a Christ who is at the same time personal and uni
versal. Strictly and unmetaphorically, the Christian
who understands both the essence of his creed and
nature's linkages in time and space, finds himself in
the fortunate position of being, by all his various
activities and in union with the crowd of his fellows,
capable of surrendering to a unique act of commu
nion. Whether he lives or dies, by his life and by his
death, he in some sense completes his God, and is
at the same time mastered by him. In short, compa
rable in every way to the Omega point which our
theory led us to foresee, Christ (provided he reveals
himself in the full realism of his incarnation) tends
to produce exactly the spiritual totalization that we
expected.

In itself the existence, even in detachment, of a
state of consciousness endowed with such riches
would bring, if fully established, a substantial verifi
cation of the views that we have set out on the
ultimate nature of human energy. But it is possible
to push the demonstration very much further by
observing that the appearance in man of the love of
- 40 -

God, understood in the fullness that we give it here,
is not a simple sporadic accident, but appears as the
regular product of a long evolution.

From Human Energy, translated by J. M. Cohen,

128-130, 144-155

7

We are accustomed to consider (and with what a
refinement of analysis!) only the sentimental face of
love, the joy and miseries it causes us. It is in its
natural dynamism and its evolutionary significance
that I shall be dealing with it here, with a view to
determining the ultimate phases of the phenome
non of man.

Considered in its full biological reality, love
that is to say, the affinity of being with being is not
peculiar to man. It is a general property of all life
and as such it embraces, in its varieties and degrees,
all the forms successively adopted by organized
matter. In the mammals, so close to ourselves, it is
easily recognized in its different modalities: sexual
passion, parental instinct, social solidarity, and so
forth. Farther off, that is to say lower down on the
tree of life, analogies are more obscure until they
become so faint as to be imperceptible. But this is
the place to repeat what I said earlier when we were
discussing the "within of things." If there were no
real internal propensity to unite, even at a prodi-

giously rudimentary level indeed in the molecule
itself it would be physically impossible for love to
appear higher up, with us, in "hominized" form. By
rights, to be certain of its presence in ourselves, we
should assume its presence, at least in an inchoate
form, in everything that is. And in fact if we look
around us at the confluent ascent of consciousness,
we see it is not lacking anywhere. Plato felt this and
has immortalized the idea in his Dialogues. Later,
with thinkers like Nicolas of Cusa, medieval philos
ophy returned technically to the same notion.
Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the
world seek each other so that the world may come
to being. This is no metaphor; and it is much more
than poetry. Whether as a force or a curvature, the
universal gravity of bodies, so striking to us, is
merely the reverse or shadow of that which really
moves nature. To perceive cosmic energy "at the
fount" we must, if there is a within of things, go
down into the internal or radial zone of spiritual
attractions.

Love in all its subtleties is nothing more, and
nothing less, than the more or less direct trace
marked on the heart of the element by the psychical
convergence of the universe upon itself.

This, if I am not mistaken, is the ray of light which
will help us to see more clearly around us.

We are distressed and pained when we see mod-

- 43 -

ern attempts at human collectivization ending up,
contrary to our expectations and theoretical predic
tions, in a lowering and an enslavement of conscious
nesses. But so far how have we gone about the busi
ness of unification? A material situation to be
defended; a new industrial field to be opened up,
better conditions for a social class or less favored na
tions those are the only and very mediocre
grounds on which we have so far tried to get to
gether. There is no cause to be surprised if, in the
footsteps of animal societies, we become mech
anized in the very play of association. Even in the
supremely intellectual activity of science (at any rate
as long as it remains purely speculative and abstract)
the impact of our souls only operates obliquely and
indirectly. Contact is still superficial, involving the
danger of yet another servitude. Love alone is capa
ble of uniting living beings in such a way as to com
plete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and
joins them by what is deepest in themselves. This is a
fact of daily experience. At what moment do lovers
come into the most complete possession of them
selves if not when they say they are lost in each
other? In truth, does not love every instant achieve
all around us, in the couple or the team, the magic
feat, the feat reputed to be contradictory, of "per
sonalizing" by totalizing? And if that is what it can
achieve daily on a small scale, why should it not re-

- 44 -

peat this one day on worldwide dimensions?

Mankind, the spirit of the earth, the synthesis of
individuals and peoples, the paradoxical concilia
tion of the element with the whole, and of unity
with multitude all these are called Utopian and yet
they are biologically necessary. And for them to be
incarnated in the world all we may well need is to
imagine our power of loving developing until it
embraces the total of men and of the earth.

It may be said that this is the precise point at
which we are invoking the impossible. Man's capac
ity, it may seem, is confined to giving his affection
to one human being or to very few. Beyond that
radius the heart does not carry, and there is only
room for cold justice and cold reason. To love all
and everyone is a contradictory and false gesture
that only leads in the end to loving no one.

To that I would answer that if, as you claim, a
universal love is impossible, how can we account for
that irresistible instinct in our hearts which leads us
towards unity whenever and in whatever direction
our passions are stirred? A sense of the universe, a
sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when
confronted by nature, beauty, music these seem to
be an expectation and awareness of a Great Pres
ence. The "mystics" and their commentators apart,
how has psychology been able so consistently to
ignore this fundamental vibration whose ring can

- 45 -

be heard by every practiced ear at the basis, or
rather at the summit, of every great emotion? Reso
nance to the All the keynote of pure poetry and
pure religion. Once again: what does this phenome
non, which is born with thought and grows with it,
reveal if not a deep accord between two realities
which seek each other; the severed particle which
trembles at the approach of "the rest"?

We are often inclined to think that we have ex
hausted the various natural forms of love with a
man's love for his wife, his children, his friends and
to a certain extent for his country. Yet precisely the
most fundamental form of passion is missing from
this list, the one which, under the pressure of an
involuting universe, precipitates the elements one
upon the other in the Whole cosmic affinity and
hence cosmic sense. A universal love is not only
psychologically possible; it is the only complete and
final way in which we are able to love.

But, with this point made, how are we to explain
the appearance all around us of mounting repulsion
and hatred? If such a strong potentiality is besieging
us from within and urging us to union, what is it
waiting for to pass from potentiality to action? Just
this, no doubt: that we should overcome the "antip-
ersonalist" complex which paralyzes us, and make
up our minds to accept the possibility, indeed the
reality, of some source of love and object of love at

- 4 6 -

the summit of the world above our heads. So long
as it absorbs or appears to absorb the person, collec
tivity kills the love that is trying to come to birth.
As such collectivity is essentially unlovable. That is
where philanthropic systems break down. Common
sense is right. It is impossible to give oneself to an
anonymous number. But if the universe ahead of us
assumes a face and a heart, and so to speak per
sonifies itself, then in the atmosphere created by this
focus the elemental attraction will immediately
blossom. Then, no doubt, under the heightened
pressure of an infolding world, the formidable ener
gies of attraction, still dormant between human
molecules, will burst forth.

The discoveries of the last hundred years, with
their unitary perspectives, have brought a new and
decisive impetus to our sense of the world, to our
sense of the earth, and to our human sense. Hence
the rise of modern pantheism. But this impetus will
only end by plunging us back into supermatter un
less it leads us towards someone.

For the failure that threatens us to be turned into
success, for the concurrence of human monads to
come about, it is necessary and sufficient for us that
we should extend our science to its farthest limits
and recogni2e and accept (as being necessary to
close and balance space-time) not only some vague

- 47 -

future existence, but also, as I must now stress, the
radiation as a present reality of that mysterious center
of our centers which I have called Omega.

From The Phenomenon of Man, translated by Bernard Wall,

264-268

- 4 8 -

II

'Reflections on J-fappiness

In the world of mechanized matter, all bodies obey
the laws of a universal gravitation; similarly, in the
world of vitalized matter, all organized beings, even
the very lowest, steer themselves and progress to
wards that quarter in which the greatest measure of
well-being is to be found.

One might well imagine, then, that a speaker
could hardly choose an easier subject than happi
ness. He is a living being addressing other living
beings, and he might well be pardoned for believ
ing that his audience contains none but such as are
already in agreement with him and are familiar with
his ideas.

In practice, however, the task I have set myself
today turns out to be much nicer and more com
plex.

Like all other animate beings, man, it is true, has
an essential craving for happiness. In man, however,
this fundamental demand assumes a new and com
plicated form for he is not simply a living being

with greater sensibility and greater vibratory power
than other living beings. By virtue of his "hominiza-
tion" he has become a reflective and critical living
being and his gift of reflection brings with it two
other formidable properties, the power to perceive
what may be possible, and the power to foresee the
future. The emergence of this dual power is suffi
cient to disturb and confuse the hitherto serene and
consistent ascent of life. Perception of the possible,
and awareness of the future when these two com
bine, they not only open up for us an inexhaustible
store of hopes and fears, but they also allow those
hopes and fears to range far afield in every direc
tion. Where the animal seems to find no difficulties
to obstruct its infallible progress towards what will
bring it satisfaction, man, on the other hand, cannot
take a single step in any direction without meeting
a problem for which, ever since he became man, he
has constantly and unsuccessfully been trying to find
a final and universal solution.

"De vita beata," in the ancient phrase on the
happy life: what, in fact, is happiness?

For centuries this has been the subject of endless
books, investigations, individual and collective ex
periments, one after another; and, sad to relate,
there has been complete failure to reach unanimity.
For many of us, in the end, the only practical conclu-

- 51 -

sion to be drawn from the whole discussion is that
it is useless to continue the search. Either the prob
lem is insoluble there is no true happiness in this
world or there can be only an infinite number of
particular solutions: the problem itself defies solu
tion. Being happy is a matter of personal taste. You,
for your part, like wine and good living. I prefer
cars, poetry, or helping others. "Liking is as unac
countable as luck/' You must often, I am sure, have
heard that sort of remark, and it may well be that
you are a little inclined to agree.

What I want to do this evening is to confront
fairly and squarely this relativist (and basically pes
simist) skepticism shared by so many of our con
temporaries, by showing you that, even for man,
the general direction in which happiness lies is by
no means so ill-defined as it is taken to be: pro
vided always that we confine our inquiry to the
search for those joys which are essential and, in so
doing, take as our basis what we are taught by sci
ence and biology.

I cannot, unfortunately, give you happiness, but
I do hope that I may be able at least to help you to
find it.

What I have to say falls into two parts. In the first,
which will be primarily theoretical, we shall try
together to define the best route leading to human
happiness.

- 52 -

In the second part, which will serve as a conclu
sion, we shall consider how we must adapt our indi
vidual lives to these general axes which run towards
happiness.

- 53 -

8. The Theoretical Axes of
Happiness

A. THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM: THREE DIFFERENT
ATTITUDES TO LIFE

If we are to understand more clearly how the prob
lem of happiness presents itself to us, and why we
find ourselves at a loss when we meet it, it is essen
tial to start by taking a comprehensive view of the
whole position. By this I mean that we must distin
guish three fundamental initial attitudes to life
adopted by men as a matter of fad

Here an analogy may well be a useful guide.

Let us imagine a party of tourists who have set out
to climb a difficult peak, and let us take a look at
them some hours after they have started. By this
time we may suppose the party to be divided into
three sorts of elements.

Some are regretting having left the inn. The fa
tigue and risks involved seem out of all proportion
to the value of a successful climb. They decide to
turn back.

Others are not sorry that they set out. The sun is
shining, and there is a beautiful view. But what is
the point of climbing any higher? Surely it is better
to enjoy the mountain from here, in the open
meadow or deep in the wood. And so they stretch
out on the grass, or explore the neighborhood until
it is time for a picnic meal.

And lastly there are the others, the real mountai
neers, who keep their eyes fixed on the peaks they
have sworn to climb.

The tired the hedonists the enthusiasts.

Three types of men and, deep within our own
selves, we hold the germ of all three. And, what is
more, it is into these three types that the mankind
in which we live and move has always been divided.

I. FIRST, THE TIRED (OR THE PESSIMISTS)

For this first category of men, existence is a mis
take or a failure. We do not fit in and so the best
thing we can do is, as gracefully as possible, to retire
from the game. If this attitude is carried to its ex
treme, and expressed in terms of a learned doctrinal
system, it leads in the end to the wisdom of the
Hindus, according to which the universe s an illu
sion and a prison or to a pessimism such as Scho
penhauer's. But, in a milder and commoner form,
the same attitude emerges and can be recognized in

any number of practical decisions that are only too
familiar to you. "What is the good of trying to find
the answer? . , . Why not leave the savages to their
savagery and the ignorant to their ignorance? What
is the point of science? What is the point of the
machine? Is it not better to lie down than to stand
up? Better to be dead than asleep in bed?" And all
this amounts to saying, at least by implication, that
it is better to be less than to be more and that best
of all would be not to be at all.

2. SECOND, THE HEDONISTS (OR PLEASURE-SEEKERS)

For men of this second type, to be is certainly
better than not to be. But we must be careful to note
that in this case "to be" has a special meaning. For
the followers of this school, to be, or to live, does
not mean to act, but simply to take your fill of this
present moment. To enjoy each moment and each
thing, husbanding it jealously so that nothing of it
be allowed to be lost and above all with no
thought of shifting one's ground that is what they
mean by wisdom. When we have had enough, then
we can lie back on the grass, or stretch our legs, or
look at the view from another spot. And mean
while, what is more, we shall not rule out the possi
bility of turning back downhill. We refuse, how-

- 57 -

ever, to risk anything for the sake of or on the
chance of the future unless, in an overrefinement
of sensibility, danger incurred for its own sake goes
to our heads, whether it be in order to enjoy the
thrill of taking a chance or to feel the shuddering
grip of fear.

This is our own version, in an oversimplified
form, of the old pagan hedonism found in the
school of Epicurus. In literary circles such has re
cently been the tendency, at any rate, of a Paul
Morand or a Montherlant or (and here it is far
more subtle) of a Gide (the Gide of Fruits of the
Earth), whose ideal of life is to drink without ever
quenching (rather, indeed, in such a way as to in
crease) one's thirst and this with no idea of re
storing one's vigor, but simply from a desire to
drain, ever more avidly, each new source.

3. FINALLY, THE ENTHUSIASTS

By these I mean those for whom living is an
ascent and a discovery. To men in this third cate
gory, not only is it better to be than not to be, but
they are convinced that it is always possible and
the possibility has a unique value to attain a fuller
measure of being. For these conquerors, enamored
of the adventurous, being is inexhaustible not in
Gide's way, like a precious stone with innumerable

facets which one can never tire of turning round
and round but like a focus of warmth and light to
which one can always draw closer. We may laugh at
such men and say that they are ingenuous, or we
may find them tiresome; but at the same time it is
they who have made us what we are, and it is from
them that tomorrow's earth is going to emerge.

Pessimism and return to the past; enjoyment of
the present moment; drive towards the future.
There, as I was saying, we have three fundamental
attitudes to life. Inevitably, therefore, we find our
selves back at the very heart of our subject: a con
frontation between three contrasting forms of hap
piness.

1. First the Happiness of Tranquillity

No worry, no risk, no effort. Let us cut down our
contacts, let us restrict our needs, let us dim our
lights, toughen our protective skin, withdraw into
our shell. The happy man is the man who attains a
minimum of thought, feeling, and desire.

2. Second the Happiness of Pleasure

Static pleasure or, better still, pleasure that is con
stantly renewed. The goal of life is not to act and
create, but to make use of opportunities. And this
again means less effort, or no more effort than is
needed to reach out for a clean glass or a fresh

- 59 -

drink. Lie back and relax as much as possible, like
a leaf drinking in the rays of the sun shift your
position constantly so that you may feel more fully:
that is the recipe for happiness. The happy man is
the man who can savor to the highest degree the
moment he holds in his hands.

3. Finally the Happiness of Growth

From this third point of view, happiness has no
existence nor value in itself, as an object which we
can pursue and attain as such. It is no more than the
sign, the effect, the reward (we might say) of appro
priately directed action: a by-product, as Aldous
Huxley says somewhere, of effort. Modern hedo
nism is wrong, accordingly, in suggesting that some
sort of renewal of ourselves, no matter what form
it takes, is all that is needed for happiness. Some
thing more is required, for no change brings happi
ness unless the way in which it is effected involves
an ascent. The happy man is therefore the man who,
without any direct search for happiness, inevitably
finds joy as an added bonus in the act of forging
ahead and attaining the fullness and finality of his
own self.

Happiness of tranquillity, happiness of pleasure,
and happiness of development: we have only to
look around us to see that at the level of man it is

- 60 -

between these three lines of progress that life hesi
tates and its current is divided.

Is it true, as we are so often told, that our choice
is determined only by the dictates of individual taste
and temperament?

Or is the contrary true, that somewhere we can
find a reason, indisputable because objective, for
deciding that one of these three roads is absolutely
the best, and is therefore the only road which can
lead us to real happiness?

B. THE ANSWER GIVEN BY THE FACTS

I. GENERAL SOLUTION: FULLER CONSCIOUSNESS AS
THE GOAL

For my part, I am absolutely convinced that such
a criterion, indisputable and objective, does exist
and that it is not mysterious and hidden away but
lies open for all to see. I hold, too, that in order to
see it all we have to do is to look around and exam
ine nature in the light of the most recent achieve
ments of physics and biology in the light, that is,
of our new ideas about the great phenomenon of
evolution.

The time has come, as you must know, when
nobody any longer retains any serious doubts about

- 61 -

this: the universe is not "ontologically" fixed: in the
very depths of its entire mass it has from the begin
ning of time been moving in two great opposing
currents. One of these carries matter towards states
of extreme disintegration; the other leads to the
building up of organic units, the higher types of
which are of astronomical complexity and form
what we call the "living world/'

That being so, let us consider the second of these
two currents, the current of life, to which we be
long. For a century or more, scientists, while admit
ting the reality of a biological evolution, have been
debating whether the movement in which we are
caught up is no more than a sort of vortex, revolv
ing in a closed circle; or whether it corresponds to
a clearly defined drift, which carries the animate
portion of the world towards some specific higher
state. There is today almost unanimous agreement
that it is the second of these hypotheses which
would appear undoubtedly to correspond to reality.
Life does not develop complexity without laws, sim
ply by chance. Whether we consider it as a whole
or in detail, by examining organic beings, it pro
gresses methodically and irreversibly towards ever
higher states of consciousness. Thus the final, and
quite recent, appearance of man on the earth is only
the logical and consistent result of a process whose
- 62 -

first stages were already initiated at the very origins
of our planet.

Historically, life (which means in fact the uni
verse itself, considered in its most active portion) is
a rise of consciousness. How this proposition
directly affects our interior attitudes and ways of
behavior must, I suggest, be immediately apparent.

We talk endlessly, as I was saying a moment ago,
about what is the best attitude to adopt when we are
confronted by our own lives. Yet, when we talk in
this way, are we not like a passenger in the Paris to
Marseilles express who is still wondering whether
he ought to be traveling north or south? We go on
debating the point but to what purpose, since the
decision has already been taken without reference
to ourselves, and here we are on board the train?
For more than four hundred million years on this
earth of ours (or it would be more correct to say,
since the beginning of time, in the universe), the
vast mass of beings of which we form a part has been
tenaciously and tirelessly climbing towards a fuller
measure of freedom, of sensibility, of inner vision.
And are we still wondering whither we should be
bound?

The truth is that the shadow of the false problems
vanishes in the light of the great cosmic laws. Unless
we are to be guilty of a physical contradiction (un
less, that is, we deny everything that we are and

everything that has made us what we are) we are all
obliged, each of us on his own account, to accept the
primordial choice which is built into the world of
which we are the reflective elements. If we with
draw in order to diminish our being, and if we stand
still to enjoy what we have, in each case we find that
the attempt to run counter to the universal stream
is illogical and impossible.

The road to the left, then, and the road to the
right are both closed: the only way out is straight
ahead.

Scientifically and objectively, only one answer
can be made to the demands of life: the advance of
progress.

In consequence, and again scientifically and ob
jectively, the only true happiness is the happiness
we have described as the happiness of growth and
movement.

Do we want to be happy, as the world is happy,
and with the world? Then we must let the tired and
the pessimists lag behind. We must let the hedonists
take their homely ease, lounging on the grassy
slope, while we ourselves boldly join the group of
those who are ready to dare the climb to the top
most peak. Press on!

Even so, to have chosen the climb is not enough.

-6 4 -

We have still to make sure of the right path. To get
up on our feet ready for the start is well enough.
But, if we are to have a successful and enjoyable
climb, which is the best route?

Here again, if we are to be sure of our ground,
we must see how nature proceeds we must learn
from the sciences of life.

2. DETAILED SOLUTION: THE THREE PHASES OF
PERSONALIZATION

As I said earlier, life in the world continually rises
towards greater consciousness, proportionate to
greater complexity as though the increasing com
plexity of organisms had the effect of deepening the
center of their being.

Let us consider, then, how this advance towards
the highest unity actually works out in detail; and,
for the sake of clarity and simplicity, let us confine
ourselves to the case of man man, who is physi
cally the highest of all living beings and the one best
known to us.

When we examine the process of our inner unifi
cation, that is to say, of our personalization, we can
distinguish three allied and successive stages, or
steps, or movements. If man is to be fully himself

and fully living, he must ( i ) be centered upon him
self; (2) be " de-centered" upon "the other"; (3) be
super-centered upon a being greater than himself.

We must define and explain in turn these three
forward movements, with which (since happiness,
we have decided, is an effect of growth) three forms
of attaining happiness must correspond.

i . First, centration. Not only physically, but intel
lectually and morally too, man is man only if he
cultivates himself and that does not mean simply
up to the age of twenty ... If we are to be fully
ourselves we must therefore work all our lives at
our organic development, by which I mean that we
must constantly introduce more order and more
unity into our ideas, our feelings and our behavior.
In this lies the whole program of action, and the
whole value and meaning (all the hard work, too!)
of our interior life, with its inevitable drive towards
things that are ever-increasingly spiritual and ele
vated. During this first phase each one of us has to
take up again and repeat, working on his own ac
count, the general labor of life. Being is in the first
place making and finding one's own self.

2. Second, decentration. An elementary tempta
tion or illusion lies in wait for the reflective center
which each one of us nurses deep inside him. It is
present from the very birth of that center; and it
consists in fancying that in order to grow greater
- 66 -

each of us should withdraw into the isolation of his
own self, and egoistically pursue in himself alone
the work, peculiar to him, of his own fulfillment,
that we must cut ourselves off from others, or trans
late everything into terms of ourselves. However,
there is not just one single man on the earth. That
there are, on the contrary, and necessarily must be,
myriads and myriads at the same time is only too
obvious. And yet, when we look at that fact in the
general context of physics, it takes on a cardinal
importance for it means, quite simply, this: that,
however individualized by nature thinking beings
may be, each man still represents no more than an
atom, or (if you prefer the phrase) a very large
molecule; in common with all the other similar
molecules, he forms a definite corpuscular system
from which he cannot escape. Physically and biolog
ically man, like everything else that exists in nature,
is essentially plural. He is correctly described as a
"mass-phenomenon." This means that, broadly
speaking, we cannot reach our own ultimate with
out emerging from ourselves by uniting ourselves
with others, in such a way as to develop through this
union an added measure of consciousness a pro
cess which conforms to the great law of complexity .
Hence the insistence, the deep surge, of love,
which, in all its forms, drives us to associate our
individual center with other chosen and specially

favored centers: love, whose essential function and
charm are that it completes us.

3. Finally, super-centration. Although this is less
obvious, it is absolutely necessary to understand it.

If we are to be fully ourselves, as I was saying, we
find that we are obliged to enlarge the base on
which our being rests; in other words, we have to
add to ourselves something of "the Other/' Once
a small number of centers of affection have been
initiated (some special circumstances determining
their choice), this expansive movement knows no
check. Imperceptibly, and by degrees, it draws us
into circles of ever-increasing radius. This is particu
larly noticeable in the world of today. From the very
beginning, no doubt, man has been conscious of
belonging to one single great mankind. It is only,
however, for our modern generations that this in
distinct social sense is beginning to take on its full
and real meaning. Throughout the last ten mil
lennia (which is the period that has brought the
sudden speeding-up of civilization) men have sur
rendered themselves, with but little reflection, to
the multiple forces (more profound than any war)
that were gradually bringing them into closer con
tact with one another. But now our eyes are open
ing, and we are beginning to see two things. The
first is that the closed surface of the earth is a con-

- 68 -

stricting and inelastic mould, within which, under
the pressure of an ever-increasing population and
the tightening of economic links, we human beings
are already forming but one single body. And the
second thing is that through the gradual buildup
within that body of a uniform and universal system
of industry and science our thoughts are tending
more and more to function like the cells of one and
the same brain. This must inevitably mean that as
the transformation follows its natural line of prog
ress we can foresee the time when men will under
stand what it is, animated by one single heart, to be
united together in wanting, hoping for, and loving
the same things at the same time.

The mankind of tomorrow is emerging from the
mists of the future, and we can actually see it taking
shape: a "super-mankind," much more conscious,
much more powerful, and much more unanimous
than our own. And at the same time (a point to
which I shall return) we can detect an underlying
but deeply rooted feeling that if we are to reach the
ultimate of our own selves, we must do more than
link our own being with a handful of other beings
selected from the thousands that surround us: we
must form one whole with all simultaneously.

We can draw but one conclusion from this two
fold phenomenon which operates both outside our-

selves and inside ourselves: that what life ultimately
calls upon us to do in order that we may be, is to
incorporate ourselves into, and to subordinate our
selves to, an organic totality of which, cosmically
speaking, we are no more than conscious particles.
Awaiting us is a center of a higher order and al
ready we can distinguish it not simply beside us,
but beyond and above us.

We must, then, do more than develop our own
selves more than give ourselves to another who is
our equal we must surrender and attach our lives
to one who is greater than ourselves.

In other words: First, be. Second, love. Finally,
worship.

Such are the natural phases of our personaliza
tion.

These, you must understand, are three linked
steps in life's upward progress; and they are in con
sequence three superimposed stages of happiness
if, as we have agreed, happiness is indissolubly as
sociated with the deliberate act of climbing.

The happiness of growing greater of loving of
worshipping.

Taking as our starting-point the laws of life, this,
to put it in a nutshell, is the triple beatitude which
is theoretically foreseeable.

Now what is the verdict of experience on this
- 70 -

point. Let us for a moment go directly to the facts,
and use them to check the accuracy of our deduc
tions.

First, there is the happiness of that deep-seated
growth in one's own self-growth in capabilities, in
sensibility, in self-possession. Then, too, there is the
happiness of union with one another, effected be
tween bodies and souls that are made to complete
one another and come together as one.

I have little need to emphasize the purity and
intensity of these two first forms of joy. Everybody
is in basic agreement on that point.

But what shall we say about the happiness of sink
ing and losing self in the future, in one greater than
ourselves? ... Is not this pure theorizing or dream
ing? To find joy in what is out of scale with us, in
what we can as yet neither touch nor see. Apart
from a few visionaries, is there anyone in the posi-
tivist and materialist world we are forced to live in
who can concern himself with such an idea?

Who, indeed?

And yet, consider for a moment what is happen
ing around us.

Some months ago, at a similar meeting, I was
telling you about the two Curies the husband and
wife who found happiness in embarking on a ven-
- 71 -

ture, the discovery of radium, in which they realized
that to lose their life was to gain it. Just think, then:
how many other men (in a more modest way,
maybe, and in different forms and circumstances),
yesterday and today, have been possessed, or are
still possessed, even to the point of death, by the
demon of research? Try to count them.

In the Arctic and Antarctic: Nansen, Andree,
Shackleton, Charcot, and any number of others.

The men of the great peaks: the climbers of Ever
est.

The laboratory workers who ran such risks: killed
by rays or by the substances they handled victims
of a self-injected disease.

Add to these the legion of aviators who con
quered the air.

And those, too, who shared man's conquest of
man: all who risked, or indeed gave, their lives for
an idea.*

Make a rough count, and when you have done so,
take the writings and letters left by these men (such
of them as left any), from the most noteworthy of
them (the everyday names) to the most humble
(those whose names are not even known) the air
mail pilots who twenty-five years ago were pioneer-

*"You know chat my life is an oblation, joyfully and con
scientiously offered, with no selfish hope of reward, to the
Power which is higher than life" (Rathenau).

- 72 -

ing the airroute across America for human thoughts
and loves, and paid for it, one after another, with
their lives. What do you find when you read what
they confided to paper? You find joy, a joy that is
both higher and deeper a joy full of power: the
explosive joy of a life that has at last found a bound
less area in which to expand.

Joy, I repeat, in that which knows no bounds.

What generally saps and poisons our happiness is
that we feel that we shall so soon exhaust and reach
the end of whatever it is that attracts us: we know
the pain of separation, of loss by attrition the
agony of seeing time fly past, the terror of knowing
how fragile are the good things we hold, the disap
pointment of coming so soon to the end of what we
are and of what we love.

But when a man has found, in an ideal or a cause,
the secret of collaboration and self-identification
(whether it be close or distant) with the universe as
it advances, then all those dark shadows disappear.
The joy of worshipping so spreads over the joy of
being and the joy of loving as to allow them to
expand and grow firmer (Curie, for example, and
Termier were admirable friends, fathers, and hus
bands): it does not lessen or destroy the earlier joys,
and it holds and brings with it, in its fullness, a
wonderful peace. Its source of nourishment is inex
haustible, because it gradually becomes one with

~ 73 -

the very consummation of the world in which we
move; by the same token, moreover, it is safe from
every threat of death and decay. Finally, it is, in one
way or another, constantly within our reach, since
the best way we have of reaching it is simply, each
one of us in his own place, to do what we are able
to do as well as we can.

The joy of the element that has become conscious
of the whole which it serves and in which it finds
fulfillment the joy that the reflective atom draws
from awareness of its function and completion
within the universe which contains it this, both
logically and factually, is the highest and most pro
gressive form of happiness I can put before you and
hope that you may attain.

- 74 -

(T>y4^c !: bw^^(r^^^

9. The fundamental Rules
of Happiness

So much for pure theory. We may now consider in
what ways it can be applied to our individual lives.
We have just made it clear that true happiness is
a happiness of growth and, as such, it awaits us in
a quarter characterized by:

1 . unification of self within our own selves;

2. union of our own being with other beings who
are our equals;

3. subordination of our own life to a life which is
greater than ours.

What consequences do these definitions entail for
our day-to-day conduct? And what practical action
should we take in order to be happy?

I can, of course, satisfy your curiosity and assist
your good will by only the most general indications;
for it is here that, quite rightly, we come up against
any number of problems of taste, accident, and tem
perament. Life becomes established and progresses
in nature and structure only by reason of the very

great variety of its elements. Each one of us sees the
world and makes his approach to it from a particular
angle, backed by a reserve of vital energy, with its
own peculiarities that cannot be shared by others.
(We may note, incidentally, that it is this comple
mentary diversity which underlies the biological
value of "personality/') Each one of us, therefore,
is the only person who can ultimately discover for
himself the attitude, the approach (which nobody
else can imitate), that will make him cohere to the
utmost possible degree with the surrounding uni
verse as it continues its progress; that cohesion
being, in fact, a state of peace which brings happi
ness.

Bearing these reservations in mind, we can, fol
lowing our earlier lines of thought, draw up the
following three rules of happiness.

i. If we are to be happy, we must first react
against our tendency to follow the line of least re
sistance, a tendency that causes us either to remain
as we are, or to look primarily to activities external
to ourselves for what will provide new impetus to
our lives. We must, it is true, sink our roots deep
into the rich, tangible, material realities which sur
round us; but in the end it is by working to achieve
our own inner perfection intellectual, artistic,

moral that we shall find happiness. The most im
portant thing in life, Nansen used to say, is to find
oneself. Through and beyond matter, spirit is hard
at work, building. Centration.

2. If we are to be happy we must, second, react
against the selfishness that causes us either to close
in on ourselves, or to force our domination upon
others. There is a way of loving a bad and sterile
way by which we try to possess rather than to give
ourselves. Here again, in the case of the couple or
the group, we meet that same law of maximum
effort which governed the progress of our interior
development. The only love that brings true happi
ness is that which is expressed in a spiritual progress
effected in common. Decentration.

3. And if we are to be happy completely happy
we must, third, in one way or another, directly or
through some medium that gradually reaches out
further afield (a line of research, a venture, an idea,
perhaps, or a cause), transfer the ultimate interest of
our lives to the advancement and success of the
world we live in. If we are to reach the zone where
the great permanent sources of joy are to be found,
we must be like the Curies, like Termier and Nan-
sen, like the first aviators and all the pioneers I
spoke of earlier: we must re-polarize our lives upon
one greater than ourselves. Do not be afraid that

- 77 -

this means that if we are to be happy we must per
form some remarkable feat or do something quite
out of the ordinary. We have only to do what any
one of us is capable of become conscious of our
living solidarity with one great Thing, and then do
the smallest thing in a great way. We must add one
stitch, no matter how small it be, to the magnificent
tapestry of life; we must discern the Immense which
is building up and whose magnetic pull is exerted
at the very heart of our own humblest activities and
at their term; we must discern it and cling to it
when all is said and done, that is the great secret of
happiness. As one of the most acute, and most
materialist, thinkers of modern England, Bertrand
Russell, has put it: it is in a deep and instinctive
union with the whole current of life that the greatest
of all joys is to be found. Super-centration.

There you have the real core of what I have to say
to you; but, having reached that point, there is one
more thing that I owe it to you and to myself to say,
if I am to be absolutely truthful.

I was recently reading a curious book [The Anat
omy of Frustration ], in which the English novelist and
thinker H. G. Wells writes about the original views
recorded earlier by an American biologist and busi
nessman, William Burrough Steele, that bear pre
cisely on the point we are now considering, human

- 78 -

happiness. Steele tries, with much good sense and
cogency, to show (just as I have been doing) that
since happiness cannot be dissociated from some
notion of immortality, man cannot hope to be fully
happy unless he sinks his own interests and hopes in
those of the world, and more particularly in those
of mankind. He adds, however, that, put in those
terms, the solution is still incomplete; for if we are
to be able to make a complete gift of self we must
be able to love. And how can one love a collective,
impersonal reality a reality that in some respects
must seem monstrous such as the world, or even
mankind?

The objection which Steele found when he
looked deeper, and to which he gave no answer, is
terribly and cruelly to the point. My treatment of
the subject would, therefore, be both incomplete
and disingenuous if I did not point out to you that
the undeniable movement which, as we can see, is
leading the mass of mankind to place itself at the
service of progress is not " self-sufficient": if this
terrestrial drive which I am asking you to share is
to be sustained, it must be harmonized and synthe
sized with the Christian drive.

We can look around and note how the mysticism
of research and the social mysticisms are advancing,
with admirable faith, towards the conquest of the

- 79 -

future. Yet no clearly defined summit, and, what is
more serious, no lot able object is there for them to
worship. That is the basic reason why the enthusi
asm and the devotion they arouse are hard, arid,
cold, and sad: to an observer they can only be a
cause for anxiety, and to those who aspire to them
they can bring only an incomplete happiness.

At the same time, parallel with these human mys
ticisms, and until now only marginal to them, there
is Christian mysticism; and for the last two thousand
years this has constantly been developing more pro
foundly (though few realize this) its view of a per
sonal God: a God who not only creates but animates
and gives totality to a universe which he gathers to
himself by means of all those forces which we group
together under the name of evolution. Under the
persistent pressure of Christian thought, the infi
nitely distressing vasmess of the world is gradually
converging upwards, to the point where it is transfi
gured into a focus of loving energy.

Surely, then, we cannot fail to see that these two
powerful currents between which the force of man's
religious energies is divided the current of human
progress, and the current of all-embracing charity
need but one thing, to run together, and complete
one another.

Suppose, first, that the youthful surge of human
- 80 -

aspirations, fantastically reinforced by our new con
cepts of time and space, of matter and life, should
make its way into the lifestream of Christianity, en
riching and invigorating it; and suppose at the same
time, too, that the wholly modern figure of a univer
sal Christ, such as is even now being developed by
Christian consciousness, should stand, should burst
into sight, should spread its radiance, at the peak of
our dreams of progress, and so give them precision,
humanize, and personalize them. Would not this be
an answer, or rather the complete answer, to the
difficulties before which our action hesitates?

Unless it receives a new blood transfusion from
matter, Christian spirituality may well lose its vigor
and become lost in the clouds. And, even more
certainly, unless man's sense of progress receives an
infusion from some principle of universal love, it
may well turn away with horror from the terrifying
cosmic machine in which it finds itself involved.

If we join the head to the body the base to the
peak then, suddenly, there comes a surge of pleni
tude.

To tell you the truth, I see the complete solution
to the problem of happiness in the direction of a
Christian humanism: or, if you prefer the phrase, in
the direction of a super-human Christianity within

- 81 -

which every man will one day understand that, at all
times and in all circumstances, it is possible for him
not only to serve (for serving is not enough) but to
cherish in all things (the most forbidding and tedi
ous, no less than the loveliest and most attractive)
a universe which, in its evolution, is charged with
love.

Lecture given by Teilhard de Chardin in Peking,

28 December 1943

- 82 -

III
Three Wedding Addresses

(^ti^^CTWW^G'^W^

10. Jit the Wedding of Odette
Hacot and Jean Teilhard d'tyry

Mademoiselle, my dear Jean,

When I look at you both here, united for all time,
my old professional habits reassert themselves, and
I cannot help glancing back at the two roads your
two roads which for so long seemed to be inde
pendent of one another, have just suddenly con
verged, and here and now, in a moment, are about
to run as one. And you will not be surprised that,
presented with a meeting so unexpected and yet
prepared for so long, I am filled with wonder and
joy, as though I were witnessing another of life's
triumphs.

Your road, Jean, began far from here, under the
heavy clouds of the tropics, in the flat paddy-fields
enclosed by the blue silhouette of Cape Saint-
Jacques. It called for nothing less than this vigorous
mixture of cold Auvergne and the Far East worthily
to continue in you a fearless, far-ranging mother,
and that legendary "Uncle Georges/* too. When I

was only a child, I used occasionally to gaze with
admiration at his face, beside the already white-
haired grandmother, in that rather dark, and half-
Chinese, drawing room in the Rue Savaron.

By tradition, and by birth, you are of Asia; and
that is why, from time to time, you have gone back
to Asia to breathe in its quality.

But what are these journeyings of the heart and
mind? Only you could draw up that itinerary, the
stages and detours through which your being had to
travel before the emergence in the end of the man
you are today. At home, as a young cadet, every
where, what influences were at work, what meet
ings came about, what attractions were felt, what
choices made! . . . How slender the fibers in the web
from which our lives are suspended!

Finally, having found your way through the shift
ing labyrinth of external and internal forces, you
have succeeded in finding your soul. In this inner
domain (for it is within you much more than outside
you) to which life has brought you, are you not
going to find yourself alone and lost? Men are
crowded together and have to force their way along
our roads, metaled or earthen; even in the skies they
are already beginning to find themselves cramped.
But in the thousand times vaster and more complex
domain of the mind, each one of us, the more he is
human (and therefore unique), the more he is con-

- 86 -

demned by his very success to wander, endlessly
lost. You might well have feared, Jean, that where
such a succession of chances had driven your ship no
other vessel, except by some even greater chance,
would be found.

And it was then, Mademoiselle, in that very habi
tation of souls in which it seemed impossible that
two beings should find one another, that you, like
the princess in a fairy story, quite naturally ap
peared. That, among some thousands of human be
ings, the eyes of two individuals should meet is in
itself a remarkable and precious coincidence: what,
then, can we say when it is two minds that meet?

While you, Jean, were engaged in the long cir
cumnavigation during which the real core of every
living creature its power to love was maturing
within you, you, Mademoiselle, were following a
different curve, the rhythm of whose approach was
nevertheless wonderfully harmonized; and so the
two of you were passing through those successive
cycles whose culmination we are witnessing here
today.

Through your family origins you, too, blossomed
on a stem whose roots lie deep in one of France's
ancient provinces Touraine instead of Auvergne
which has about it something warmer and gent
ler; and, to crown this, you had that finishing touch
which only the atmosphere of Paris can give. From

- 87 -

your childhood you, too, learned to revere that
same historic academy and the exact science of hon
orable warfare. In a circle of three children which
included yet another Jacqueline with an excep
tional mother, you, too, received that generously
liberal upbringing, firmly based on Christian princi
ples, which has given so wonderfully harmonious a
balance to your development. And so it was with
how astonishing a symmetry in your destinies
that, without realizing it, you were gradually mov
ing towards your meeting with the man who, in
equal ignorance, was moving towards you.

I referred, a moment ago, to fairy tales. Who was
the fairy who, without ever breaking her thread,
worked alone to weave today into one perfect
whole the double web of your two lives?

Was it only chance that blindly worked this mira
cle? Must we really resign ourselves to believing
that the value of the loveliest things around us de
pends simply on what is unpredictable, unusual, and
in consequence impermanent, in the confluence of
the elements from which they seem to us to have
emerged?

True enough, there are days when the world ap
pears to be one vast chaos. Great, indeed, is the
confusion; so great that if we look at ourselves we
may very well reel with dizziness at the prospect of
our very existence. With such heavy odds against

- 88 -

us, is it not most improbable that we should find
ourselves whole and entire, and living as single
individuals, let alone as two? We wonder, then,
whether true wisdom may not consist in holding on
to every chance that comes our way, and immedi
ately drawing all we can from it. It would be mad
ness, surely, to take any further risk with the future
and to strive after a life that is even more improba
ble because even more elevated.

For years now, Jean, my work has been such that
every day of my life has necessarily been lived
under the shadow of the improbability of life's suc
cesses. And once again it is this improbability which
I meet today when I look at the happiness of both
of you together.

So: since you have asked me to speak today, allow
me to tell you what, after a long confrontation with
the splendid reality of the world, is my dearest and
most profound conviction. I began, like everyone
else, by being impressed by the superior impor
tance, among events, that must be accorded to what
comes lower down the scale, and to the past. Then,
unless I was to cease to understand anything that
goes on within me or around me, I was obliged to
shift my point of view and accord absolute suprem
acy to the future and the greater.

No, I believe what gives the universe around us
its consistence is not the apparent solidity of the

- 89 -

ephemeral materials from which bodies are made.
Rather is it the flame of organic development which
has been running through the world since the be
ginning of time, constantly building itself up. With
all its weight behind it, the world is being impelled
upon a center which lies ahead of it. Far from being
impermanent and accidental, it is souls, and al
liances of souls, it is the energies of souls, that alone
progress infallibly, and it is they alone that will en
dure.

What is imponderable in the world is greater than
what we can handle.

What radiates from living beings is more valuable
than their caresses.

What has not yet come is more precious than
what is already born.

That is why what I want to say to you now, Jean
what I want to say to both of you is this:

"If you want, if both of you want, to answer the
summons (or respond to the grace, for that is the
better word) which comes to you today from God-
animated life, then take your stand confidently and
unhesitatingly on tangible matter; take that as an
indispensable bulwark but, through and above
that matter, put your faith in the bulwark of the
intangible."

Put your faith in the spirit that lies behind you;
by that I mean the long series of unions similar to
- 90 -

your own which throughout the ages have ac
cumulated, to pass on to you, a great store of
healthy vigor, of wisdom and of freedom. Today
this treasure is entrusted to your keeping. Remem
ber that you are responsible for it to God and the
universe.

Put your faith, then, in the spirit that lies ahead
of you. Creation never comes to a halt. It is through
you two that life seeks to prolong itself. Your union,
therefore, must not be a self-enclosed embrace; let
it express itself in that deliberate act, infinitely more
unifying than any inactivity, which consists in an
effort directed towards one and the same, ever-
greater, passionately loved, goal.

And finally, in a phrase that sums up all the rest,
put your faith in the spirit which dwells between the
two of you. You have each offered yourself to the
other as a boundless field of understanding, of en
richment, of mutually increased sensibility. You
will meet above all by entering into and constantly
sharing one another's thoughts, affections, dreams,
and prayer. There alone, as you know, in spirit
which is arrived at through the flesh, you will find
no surfeit, no disappointments, no limits. There
alone the skies are ever open for your love; there
alone lies the great road ahead.

At this very moment can you not feel this spirit,
- 91 -

to which I am urging you, concentrating upon you;
can you not feel its mantle spread over you?

The united love of so many kinsfolk and friends
gathered together, the warmth and purity of wishes
transmitted, through some subtle medium, from
Auvergne, from Touraine or Poitou, and from the
Cote d' Argent, too; the blessings sent by those
whom we no longer see; and above all the infinite
tenderness of Him who sees in you two, forming
one, the welding of one more precious link in his
great work of creative union.

In very truth, grander than the external, material
ceremonial which surrounds and honors you, it is
the accumulated forces of an invisible loving-kind
ness which fill this church.

I pray that this spiritual ardor may come down
upon your nascent love, and preserve it for eternal
life. Amen.

1 4 June 1928

^^<^(r^^^<r^

11. Jit the Wedding of M and
}Vlme de la Goublaye de Menorval

Mademoiselle, Monsieur,

At this moment, when your two lives are being
made one in this chapel, I can think of nothing more
appropriate nor more valuable to offer you than a
few words in praise of unity.

Unity: an abstract term, maybe, in which philoso
phers delight; and yet it is primarily a very concrete
quality with which we all dream of endowing our
works and the world around us. To the apparent
fragmentation of material elements, to nature's ca
pricious movements, to the irregularity of color and
sound, to the busy confusion of the masses of man
kind, and the undisciplined vacillations of our aspi
rations and thoughts what is it that, through all
that is best in our activities, we are trying to do, if
not constantly to introduce a little more unity? Sci
ence, art, politics, ethics, thought, mysticism: these
are so many different forms of one and the same
impulse towards the creation of some harmony; and

in that impulse is expressed, through the medium of
our human activities, the destiny and, I would even
say, the very essence of the universe. Happiness,
power, wealth, wisdom, holiness: these are all syno
nyms for a victory over the many. At the heart of
every being lies creation's dream of a principle that
will one day give organic form to its fragmented
treasures. God is unity.

What conscious line of action, then, will enable us
to pursue and attain this divine unity?

Will it, perhaps, be attained by each one of us
setting himself up at the heart of his own little world
as an exclusive center of domination and enjoy
ment? Does our happiness lie in relating to our
selves, to the greatest possible degree, all that lies
outside us? Shall we be happy only if we each be
come our own little god?

That you two should be here today, bride and
bridegroom, shows how completely you have been
untouched by this illusion of the self as center. One
of the most pernicious hallucinations that life meets
as it awakes to intelligence is the closed concentra
tion of the element on itself; and by this you have
not been misled. You have seen that the being in
each one of us does not contain its own final pole;
it represents a particle which is destined to be incor
porated in higher syntheses. Your example shows
us not the unity of isolation but the unity of union.

- 94 -

It is the unity of union that you have chosen; and
you have chosen well. But this higher unity that is
promised to the elements which seek for one an
other in a common principle that brings them to
gether how precisely can that unity reach its per
fection in you two? How, being two, will you be
more truly one? The question brings me to the very
point I want to deal with in these few words; and my
answer is: "By never relaxing your effort to become
more yourselves by the giving of yourselves."

Because union brings fulfillment, it can appear to
be a final term, a resting-place. In fact, nothing has
a greater share of life's incessantly progressive na
ture. If the elements are to be able to coalesce, they
must spend a long time in first developing in them
selves those complementary values which can com
bine with one another. And when at last the ele
ments meet, they still cannot link up with one
another except by advancing continually further
along the line of their own fulfillment. True union,
as it brings together, so, and precisely so, it differen
tiates. It is a continual discovery and a continual
conquest.

Perhaps my language is a little ponderous, but it
is in those terms that I look for an explanation of
your past, and of the promise that the future holds
for you.

Your past . . . When we look at you, Mademoi-

- 95 -

selle, in this festive setting we, your friends, who
have so often seen you deep in the study of rocks
or maps, we who have followed you in our thoughts
through distant and dangerous expeditions we
might well have a vague feeling that your life has
gone off at a tangent, and that you have become a
different woman. "What was the good of conquer
ing this, in order finally to choose that? ' ' And the
right answer to our question is, "What is the good
of this except as a preparation for that?" Never,
Mademoiselle, never should you, impossible
though it be, ever be so tempted regret those long
hours in the laboratory, all the careful work that
went into those lengthy reports, those strenuous
journeys through the forests of Madagascar. During
these adventures of mind and body, were you not
developing in yourself the perfect companion for a
man who himself for this is true of you, the bride
groom, too, is it not? belongs to the race of those
who work for the earth and explore its secrets? It
took life millions of years to mold, in the work of
creation, the heart and mind that your mother
passed on to you, Mademoiselle. And it still called
for all the work and all the hazards of your early
youth to perfect in you a being with the capacity to
give its self.

And now that same law of which I was speaking,
which required that each of you should, alone,
- 96 -

make ready for union, is again waiting for you to
complete one another, each through the other, in
union. What will be the never-ended story of your
mutual conquest? This is known to God alone, who
is about to bless you. But for my part, I can, on the
authority of all human experience, assure you of
this: that your happiness will depend on the width
of the field you allow to your hopes. An affection
that is narrowly closed in on itself stifles body and
soul. If you are to ensure the uninterrupted prog
ress that is essential to the fruitfulness of your union,
you must extend still further the horizons that have
bounded the years of your development.

You will be happy, happy as our prayers and
wishes would have you be, only if your two lives
come together and extend each other, boldly
launching themselves upon the future in a passion
ate drive towards one greater than yourselves.

1 5 June 1935

- 97 -

<rw^cr^#^<rw^7v^

12. Jit the Wedding of Christine
Vresch and Claude- Marie Haardt

My dear Christine, my dear Claude,

Life is, indeed, full of strange coincidences and,
perhaps, strange designs. As Christmas was ap
proaching in the year 1932, when I was accompany
ing Georges-Marie Haardt on a journey across the
deserts of Central Asia, who would have guessed
that sixteen years later it would fall to me to address
these words to you, as you in your turn are about
to set out on another great adventure, that of your
two combined lives? And since the coincidence
probably disguises a secret design of destiny, may
not this plan contained in material things (or
worked out by Providence) be that I should pass on
to you both and more particularly to you, my dear
Claude, in the presence of the mother to whom you
owe so much the admonition, the watchword, that
your father, that great inspirer and great traveler,
continually offered us by his example, mile after
mile over the tracks of Asia, as he urged us to press

on and keep our eyes fixed on the peaks that tow
ered ahead of us?

He crossed the Sahara, he crossed Africa and
China; and these undertakings, each with its differ
ent problems, were all (as is every living reality)
built upon a solid material structure. Each was care
fully worked out with an eye to a precise end. And
yet, beyond any economic goal, it was always to
wards some sort of distantly envisaged dream that
the fleet of trucks and half-tracks followed him as
their leader across the sand. For those who were
privileged to take part, these expeditions were al
ways to some extent, and will always remain in their
memories, the following of a guiding star . . .

My dear Christine, my dear Claude, now that
your turn has come, do you too, imitating your
father's grand demeanor in a different sphere, enter
into life with your feet firmly on the ground but
your eyes fixed on what is greater and finer than
you. The temptation which besets love, you know,
and makes it barren, is to rest upon what is pos
sessed it is a shared selfishness. To find one an
other, and to be truly made one, you must seek no
other road but that of a strong passion for a common
ideal. Between the two of you (and here the very
structure of the world forces upon you a law that
cannot be broken) between the two of you, re
member, no unblemished union can exist except in

- 99 -

some higher center which brings you together.

May that center soon be the child!

And, come what may, may that center be the
excitement and joy of each discovering and com
pleting the other, ever more fully, in heart and
mind!

And, above all, may that center in one way or
another (depending on what is your own particular
way) be the God before whom and in whom you are
on the point of uniting your two lives for ever: God,
the only definitive center of the universe; not the
distant God of common formulas, but God in the
form in which he must, and strives to, show himself
incommunicably to you if only you surrender un
conditionally to the inner force which is at this mo
ment operating to bring you together.

21 December 1948

- IOO -

(continued front front flap)

three fundamental attitudes towards life (the
attitudes of pessimists, pleasure seekers, and
enthusiasts); distills from the discussion his
own fundamental rules of happiness that any
one can apply; and points the way for each
person to become fully him- or herself and
fully alive which is, the author explains, the
key to true, lasting happiness.

Throughout On Love and Happiness, Teil-
hard de Chardin traces out the theme that, if
we are to become truly who we are, we must
"give ourselves away" to each other, and to
God. This idea, and others of equal impor
tance, is expressed in a very personal way in
the three wedding addresses that close the
book. Here the human quest for happiness
and the need for love are seen as blending "in
a passionate drive towards one greater than
[ourjselves."

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was
a priest, scientist, author, and philosopher.
His highly influential books include The
Phenomenon of Man, The Divine Milieu,
Human Energy, and Writings in Time of War.

Jacket design by Karen Emerson
Author photograph O Philippe Halsman